Supreme in Service
Remembering ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, a century after His passing on 28 November 1921
The role He cherished to perform was servant
He had no time for chasing wealth or glory
From youngest days His badge of pride was love
Though cast from comfort down to bitter hardship
No evil could suppress His holy joy
No threat divert Him from His chosen walk
In early life we see Him freely walk
In Persian pastoral lands where shepherds served
To tend His Father’s flocks. The simple joys
He then could relish, tasted blissful. Glory
Then was playful gladness. As yet, no hardship
Touched His safety in a home suffused with love
But came an awful storm, a flood of hate
And in the streets a host of martyrs fell
To cruelties meted out with mindless ease
By mobs inflamed by viperous connivers
Who on His stainless Father too, put blame
And thus He saw His Sire in chains, what grief!
What grief, what grief! And still to come, more griefs!
As exiles banished at the hands of hate
As targets of a king’s unfounded blame
For any family, such would mark their fall
But this one, arrayed in armour that connivers
Could not pierce, maintained their souls at ease
The Servant proved His mastery of hardship
By making every hell the home of joy
Imprisonment empowered His zeal to serve
When freedom came, the needy drew His love
He mapped the way, He showed us how to walk
He did it all to please the King of Glory
When finally He went to be with Glory
The Shrine of Light He’d reared up in hardship
Continued to illuminate the walk
Of those who’d come to know His joy
And future times will hark His call to love
And generations thank Him for His service
He drowned His hardships in His will to serve
He burned with joy in thralldom to God’s Glory
He walked the way He asks we walk, for love